JUDGMENT

KRISHNA IYER. J.:—We permit ourselves a few preliminary observations disturbingly induced by the not altogether untypical circumstances of these two appeals, before proceeding to state the facts set out the submissions and decide the points.

2. Industrial law in India has not fully lived up to the current challenges of industrial life. both in the substantive norms or regulations binding the three parties - the State. Management and Labour-and in the processual system which has baulked, by dawdling dysfunction, early finality and prompt remedy in a sensitive area where quick solution is of the very essence of real justice. The legislative and judicial processes have promises to keep if positive industrial peace; in tune with distributive economic justice and continuity of active production, were to be accomplished. The architects of these processes will, we hopefully expect, fabricate creative changes in the system normative and adjectival.

3. The two appeal before us, passported by special leave under Art. 136, relate to an industrial dispute with its roots in 1948, meandering along truce, union rivalry and the like, into strikes and settlements, the last of which led to an